Steam and Stories

Book Details

Title: Off Base
Series: Out of Uniform #1
Author: Annabeth Albert
Genre: MM Romance
Length: 276 pages
Publication Date: Jan 9, 2017
Format Read: Kindle
This book was not provided free

Review

Warning! This review will contain spoilers!

Off Base is the first book in the Out of Uniform series by Annabeth Albert. It’s a cute little romance between a virgin, religious, jock-y Navy SEAL, and a Twinky gamer boy. The characters apparently come from another one of the authors series called #gamers, and at the time of this review, I have yet to read, although I do plan on it!

Zack is a Navy SEAL, grew up with a heavily religious family that keeps trying to set him up with a local church gal. He gets bullied by one of his teammates like he got bullied by his older brother. This makes him look to live off base, by himself. Luckily he gets a little help from his chief, and with the promise to help fix up a rental property, he gets to stay there for free.

In comes Pike, Zacks’ best friends…best friend. His ‘dream job’ at working for a game development company fell through, and got a teaching job where Zack lives, happens to have a mother who was heavily into flipping and renovating houses, so naturally he is good at it to. There we have a perfect coincidence storm that is perfect to room with Zack to help him renovate the house. And that is what he does.

My biggest gripe: The book wants to be a Navy SEAL Military book, and it just does not seem to hit that mark. There are few references to being a SEAL, but if you take away any mention of SEALs, it could just be a college sports team story. The trouble Zack was having with bullying, and his feelings, just seemed like a jock on a sports team bullying a shy new kid on the team. It didn’t seem to be a ‘we all have each others back, macho team building’ type of story.

To the authors credit, the ending of the book fell more into feeling like a military story. It just took me a while to feel that. Maybe that is a me problem, as I read this book just after reading a few other NAVY Seal and other military heavy books, and compared to those, this one seemed light. At the time of this review, I am currently reading the second installment of this series, and it feels much more like a military story, but maybe because my head moved into the realm of this authors version of NAVY Seal teams.

Scoring

Characters: 4 / 5

Zack: I thought Zack had a good story arc. From being this sweet innocent church going in the closet NAVY Seal to being out and proud and having a support system to make up for the bigoted people he left behind. There were times I wanted to reach into the book to slap some sense into him, but he got there in the end.

Pike: He had a weak start, but a strong finish. I was a bit confused on what he was, and what his goal was at first. By the end, he had one big decision to make between two strong choices, and since this romance is a HFN, he made the right one.

Story: 3 / 5

A few reasons I knocked off some points for the story. While the story is mostly fine as it is, like how it progresses, a few things could have been dialed up or down.

First, as I griped about earlier, it didn’t really feel like a military story until the end. There wasn’t going off to battle, saving lives, being dangerous. It was more like, here we do some training, oh and these people are also part of the team. The most dangerous part of the story is when they went on a training mission and had a medical issue not related at all to anything military. Maybe adding in more danger to heighten the anxiety between Zack and Pike would fix it a bit, I don’t know. It is hard to put into words.

Second, the stacking of homophobia seemed a bit much. While homophobia is a nice trope for MM romance, we seemed to have gotten multiple doses of it. Between Zack’s overly religious family, to a few teammates on Zack’s team. It all seemed to be stacked on Zack’s shoulders. At the time of this review, I did look at blurbs for the rest of the books (Up to 7) in this series, and one name from this book that I didn’t see, was Harper’s. If Harper doesn’t get a redemption arc in another book, then the author missed a story there. He seemed to be a perfect ‘in-the-closet’ side character that could play well in his own story. We shall see.

Third, and I don’t weigh this that heavily on the score. Things just seemed to be almost too perfect during the story. Zack wants off base, oh look a free house. Pike has a temporary teaching gig in Zack’s city, oh look he can’t find any housing other than Zack. The landlord is helping Zack and Pike with everything they need. Pike’s temporary job is all of a sudden, open for a permanent position, at the same time the game company he got denied from, wants him back! A lot of coincidences that are perfectly timed to provide the best possible outcome for Zack and Pike to be together, just seemed a little bit too much. Again, it is more of a nuanced nit-picky problem, and doesn’t really effect the quality of the story.

Writing: 5 / 5

I had no problem with the writing. The chapters seemed to be well paced and a decent length. There may have been a few spots, especially at the beginning, that I had to re-read to get my head in the game, but that is more of a me issue when I start a new series so I can get used to new writing styles.

Romance: 4 / 5

Romance was good when we got it. It took a long time to get there, mainly because most of the book was in the closet Zack holding it back. When it did come, it was decent for what it was. The ending really showed more of the romantic side of their relationship once they could be themselves.

Steam: 🍵🍵

Not very steamy. Yes, there are multiple sex scenes, and they do naturally progress from stuff like kissing, to oral, etc. There isn’t an over abundance of it, there could have been a few more. Overall, I think for what this story was, there was a fine amount of it. The steamy-ness slowed down towards the end, which surprisingly I actually liked. I tend to gloss over sex scenes towards the end of books because it just becomes the same stuff. I don’t need to read the same sex scene that just uses different words fifty times in a book. Sex scenes should add something to the story. This book did it well in my opinion.

Overall: 4 / 5

I don’t count the steam level in my final score, because how graphic and detailed sex scenes don’t determine how much I like the book.

Final Thoughts

This book is a nice light read, with heavy homophobia topics. I liked it well enough to jump right into the next book in the series, and loving it even more. I found out that this book has two additional short stories, but as of this review, I have yet to find anywhere to read them. I want more of Zack and Pike.

If you are into a slow burn romance arc, with classic romance tropes. This book will be good for you. Stay tuned for my other reviews from this series coming soon!

Tea Suggestion

With this book, I had a healthy dose of PassionFruit Papaya black tea. The sweetness and refreshing flavors made me feel like I was on the beach in San Diego watching these characters remodel their home. And the black tea helped me stay up to finish the book.

Thanks!

Thanks for reading my review of Off Base by Annabeth Albert. If my review inspires you to read it, let me know! If you have read the book, leave me a comment below or on any of my socials letting me know what YOU thought of it.

Until next time, enjoy a book and a drink.